After some serious internet research, I concluded that I had a mild case of altitude sickness. It's gone now. I feel almost normal physically, but there is still a lingering sense of lightness. I swear it is easier to lift water bottles here...
Also, I don't speak Spanish. Not yet, at least. I'm working on it. The first few days I was super stressed out about not knowing what people are saying; now I don't care. They are talking about food and money and politics and the weather, just like everybody else. I'll catch up eventually.
Movies here are very cheap. We saw Terminator last night and it was a new release (here at least) and only cost about $5 each. And the commercials before the show? Super hilarious! Commercials in the US are not usually so funny to me, only weird and appalling. Here I was laughing out loud.
I'd like to thank Tricky for being born on this day and making it no less than a perfect transition from summer to late summer. After a party like this, summer has to take a step down.
HUGS
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Mamey
I am adjusting a little bit better today. The first day was a whirlwind of flamenco performance and lunch with family and friends that lasted what seemed like a million hours to me, who did not understand a word of the conversation. Organ grinders in khaki uniforms filled the air with circus melodies, shouts of victory when a Mexico goal was gained against the Estados Unidos punctuated the lazy Sunday mood, and a troupe of young college women in very elaborate troubadour costumes serenaded us with Mariposita and other tunes in a friendly contest among music students. The air was so rich with new sounds and bad pollution that I was dizzy and disoriented. It was beautiful, indeed, but total sensory overload. We followed that up with a trip to the mall [wince] which while necessary and productive to comparison shop on furniture and appliances, was not so easy on the already maxed out sensory input portion of my brain. And then we went to the Superama, omg.
The whole adventure was filled with new relationship sensations on warp speed also. After two months of getting to know Agent Triple L via the webbernets, we were now finally face to face, hand in hand, lips to lips, eyes to eyes, right on top of each other. Naturally I freaked out. Of course I didn't know I was freaking out until the next day when I wanted to run and hide in a corner like a threatened animal. I was too busy being optimistic and positive and insisting on immediately having a perfect and wonderful home less than 24 hours after leaving the sweet cradle of the only home I have ever known, glorious Midwest USA. Cheese whiz. We have discussed these things and are working out the kinks of living together and getting to know each other at the same time. Not easy pals, but so far so good and getting better.
So, Monday was awful. I felt lost and lonely. I was horrified by the discovery that everything you need for your home is twice as expensive as in the US. I was equally horrified that a major portion of the avenue by our house collapsed into a non-reinforced construction pit mere hours after we had driven over the very spot that fell in. This being a primary route on our domestic reconnaisance missions made me a tad bit angry. Apparently, in Mexico, developers save millions by skimping on oh, you know, foundation walls and safety precautions like structural integrity. Don't even think about the fact that we are "situated atop three of the large tectonic plates that constitute the earth's surface, Mexico is one of the most seismologically active regions on earth" [if you believe Wikipedia]. My apartment is on the 28th floor on a hill so I can see quite a bit of the traffic goings on below. I have been watching the jams come and go and listening to incessant angry beeps at the barricade which is conveniently situated just below my window. Word on the street is two months before everything is fixed. Two months of angry beeps.
Today, however, I finally got to try the thing that intrigued me the most on my visit here a few months ago: a Mamey. Hoo boy is it weird. The thing is about the size of a nerf football, looks like a cross between a kiwi and a cantaloupe and is very heavy. I had seen these fruits pedled by the side of the road and they were cut open showing hot orange-red insides. I wanted one. So I got one. I cut it open and found that it was more like an avocado than anything else. The meat of the fruit has the same texture and density as avocado, but it is really red, and the flavor is like an insanely sweet yam with some kind of fake berry flavor. The pit inside was super shiny like it was laquered and smelled more aromatic than the fruit itself. Well, it was too much for me. One bite made me kind of gag a little bit. The second bite I almost enjoyed, but then I decided that the Mexicans might be on to something with all the salt and limon, so I doused the bowl of gooey fruit with some to see if that would be more palatable. Hmm, not so much. I have forced down about a quarter of the thing just because I hate to waste such wonderful fruit, but I'm struggling with it. I think it might be good in a smoothy with some tart yogurt. To the blender!!!
I also drove for the first time today, just from the apartment to the sushi place, and it was quite an experience. I just might get the hang of it eventually. You just put your whole car in, you put your whole car out, you drive around like crazy and you try not to get hit...
HUGS
Monday, July 27, 2009
Home is where...
1) My apartment is filled with rose petals and candlelight, sweet music and delicious dinner prepared by Agent Triple L.
2) Household cleaner smells like fruit punch.
3) Kisses are exchanged with complete strangers (how to: touch cheek, kiss air)
4) You can not drink water from the tap.
5) It rains everyday around 4-6pm but the weather is perfect all year round.
6) The avenue by your house is closed because half of it fell into a non-reinforced construction site pit earlier this morning.
7) You might get kidnapped.
8) The fruit is so delicious and juicy that you are ashamed to say you've ever eaten an apple before, not to mention the MANGOES, the apricots, the limes, the mameys, the persimmons, etc.
9) The pollution makes you dizzy (they say I'll get used to it).
10) English won't get you very far.
11) I am loved like nobody's business.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Santa Fe is dead. Long live Santa Fe.
Tomorrow is my last day at the office. I had to say goodbye to my boss today and was caught off guard by my own emotions. Breaking up is hard to do. There are pens to distribute, files to file, random items to throw away or bequeath to those who remain. There are things I have to communicate, people to say goodbye to. When the layoffs happened there were so many goodbye parties and send offs that seemed so necessary. Going now of my own volition seems to be kind of an insult to those hanging on for dear life. I failed at putting together a happy hour next week. Nobody told me I had to pick a place and time and I butchered the guest list trying to second guess who might actually show. After work Tuesday, at Plymouth rooftop, where it all began...?
It is strange to watch people attempt to cope with loss. I didn't know I would be a loss, but seeing a few people make rationalizations or construct elaborate reasons to dismiss me, I see now that I will be missed. I didn't know that this office would be a loss until my own tears were spilling. I have made friendships here that go beyond the task at hand. I found safety in those relationships and I know now that they only existed because we were bonded by common ground. Other friendships will continue beyond the Santa Fe building.
I spent an hour and a half online with Agent Triple L tonight. We just spent time together. Not much talking, lots of looking at each other trying to imagine what it will be like just to be in the same room. So very strange.
My eyelids are drooping now. I thought I would be up all night, but now I am crashing. C'mon take it easy, baby... make it last all night. She was an American girl...
It is strange to watch people attempt to cope with loss. I didn't know I would be a loss, but seeing a few people make rationalizations or construct elaborate reasons to dismiss me, I see now that I will be missed. I didn't know that this office would be a loss until my own tears were spilling. I have made friendships here that go beyond the task at hand. I found safety in those relationships and I know now that they only existed because we were bonded by common ground. Other friendships will continue beyond the Santa Fe building.
I spent an hour and a half online with Agent Triple L tonight. We just spent time together. Not much talking, lots of looking at each other trying to imagine what it will be like just to be in the same room. So very strange.
My eyelids are drooping now. I thought I would be up all night, but now I am crashing. C'mon take it easy, baby... make it last all night. She was an American girl...
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Two Weeks
Here I am at the dining room table, drinking coffee, listening to the leaves rustle on the trees... breezes blowing in the windows, a green haze of sunlight filtering through a veritable forest of foliage, steady power, knowledge that the water is clean straight out of the tap, favorite Trader Joe's snacks in the fridge, laundry in the dryer. Everything is as I know it to be even though I have only been at this house for one month and a half.
This is Illinois. I was raised here. The dirt and the grass and the flowering weeds in the empty lots have a distinct and intoxicating smell that exists nowhere else on earth. The people look how I expect them to look, talk the way I have always heard, drive in the same bad ways as all the other drivers, eat where I expect them to eat making certain restaurants instantly popular, congregate for the same reasons, in the same ways with the same target picnic blankets. We all look the same. I can spot the Chicagoans in the airports now. You can just tell by the way they dress in black tops and blue jeans and the way they stand with cocky self assurance and the particular proportions of height and girth. These are my people.
I am leaving here to invest in knowing other people. People who belong to someone else, who mean home to them. I am not going to Europe as so many assume when you try to politely skirt the issue of voluntarily not having a job by saying you'll "be traveling". I am going to Mexico, a place I barely knew existed outside of mythical Spring Break Cancun, and the somewhere that all those Mexicans came from to live in Chicago. How's that for ignorant American? Mexico is just as North American as the US and Canada, and I know so little about all three. Yet I stand up and say I'm American as though that is different. There are approximately 900 million people (if you believe wikipedia) who can rightfully call themselves American and I can't see them because they are like my own face. I need to go far away and look back in order to have proper perspective.
I will have new people. In two weeks, I will have new people. I am not going to visit, I am going to live and to love and to be of a place. I am not going to be a US citizen on vacation, or a scholar doing research, although I will do both of these things. I am freely and fully accepting that there is a world which produced a human being who is more like me than most of my people. I am beginning to trust that what is foreign is actually kin.
This kind of blows my mind.
This is Illinois. I was raised here. The dirt and the grass and the flowering weeds in the empty lots have a distinct and intoxicating smell that exists nowhere else on earth. The people look how I expect them to look, talk the way I have always heard, drive in the same bad ways as all the other drivers, eat where I expect them to eat making certain restaurants instantly popular, congregate for the same reasons, in the same ways with the same target picnic blankets. We all look the same. I can spot the Chicagoans in the airports now. You can just tell by the way they dress in black tops and blue jeans and the way they stand with cocky self assurance and the particular proportions of height and girth. These are my people.
I am leaving here to invest in knowing other people. People who belong to someone else, who mean home to them. I am not going to Europe as so many assume when you try to politely skirt the issue of voluntarily not having a job by saying you'll "be traveling". I am going to Mexico, a place I barely knew existed outside of mythical Spring Break Cancun, and the somewhere that all those Mexicans came from to live in Chicago. How's that for ignorant American? Mexico is just as North American as the US and Canada, and I know so little about all three. Yet I stand up and say I'm American as though that is different. There are approximately 900 million people (if you believe wikipedia) who can rightfully call themselves American and I can't see them because they are like my own face. I need to go far away and look back in order to have proper perspective.
I will have new people. In two weeks, I will have new people. I am not going to visit, I am going to live and to love and to be of a place. I am not going to be a US citizen on vacation, or a scholar doing research, although I will do both of these things. I am freely and fully accepting that there is a world which produced a human being who is more like me than most of my people. I am beginning to trust that what is foreign is actually kin.
This kind of blows my mind.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Pancetta and Peace
I had a wonderful dinner tonight with friends who are in the middle of life. They struggle and they learn and they remember. And then we eat pasta with pancetta in it. I am not certain, but I am pretty sure pancetta is really thick chunks of Italian bacon. Pause for effect... Right?
We leave, we come back and what should be full circle is sometimes retrograde. Our lives take us places and it is just like math, you can only move forward, positive accumulation of forward trajectory. But sometimes, the pals back at the ranch expect that you are the same person you were when you left. They are suspicious, they are unsure, they just don't know what you've been up to, so they assume you've been right there with them. Or that you are pulling a fast one. It takes some bravery to say "you have changed" and not have that connote a loss. It takes more courage to admit you do not have the same experience as someone else, especially if you are from the same home town. Humans find comfort in what is familiar, yet sometimes resent familiarity's limits. Humans sometimes fear that which is foreign, yet are attracted to the difference and the potential. It is a hard task to rebuild trust when returning to one's home town from valuable life enriching adventures. Humility, forgiveness and total respect for the growth and maturity of the pals who stayed put are necessary on behalf of the traveler. And the same for the life long residents.
Earlier, before dinner, we all visited our friend who recently gave birth to a beautiful girl. She is brand new, fresh and precious. She has a condition wherein her lower intestine has a portion that does not have nerves and so therefore cannot process the elimination of waste. Now I don't know how many of y'all have been around babies, but the biggest thing they do is poop. It is like life and death for a newborn and all the adults hover around saying "did she poop yet? is she pooping? make sure she poops..." So this is a big deal. And I am so happy to know this family and to be able to help them get through this rough phase until their baby can have surgery and poop like a normal baby.
I love life. Poop and pancetta, and all. (Wait, that is gross...)
GRIN
We leave, we come back and what should be full circle is sometimes retrograde. Our lives take us places and it is just like math, you can only move forward, positive accumulation of forward trajectory. But sometimes, the pals back at the ranch expect that you are the same person you were when you left. They are suspicious, they are unsure, they just don't know what you've been up to, so they assume you've been right there with them. Or that you are pulling a fast one. It takes some bravery to say "you have changed" and not have that connote a loss. It takes more courage to admit you do not have the same experience as someone else, especially if you are from the same home town. Humans find comfort in what is familiar, yet sometimes resent familiarity's limits. Humans sometimes fear that which is foreign, yet are attracted to the difference and the potential. It is a hard task to rebuild trust when returning to one's home town from valuable life enriching adventures. Humility, forgiveness and total respect for the growth and maturity of the pals who stayed put are necessary on behalf of the traveler. And the same for the life long residents.
Earlier, before dinner, we all visited our friend who recently gave birth to a beautiful girl. She is brand new, fresh and precious. She has a condition wherein her lower intestine has a portion that does not have nerves and so therefore cannot process the elimination of waste. Now I don't know how many of y'all have been around babies, but the biggest thing they do is poop. It is like life and death for a newborn and all the adults hover around saying "did she poop yet? is she pooping? make sure she poops..." So this is a big deal. And I am so happy to know this family and to be able to help them get through this rough phase until their baby can have surgery and poop like a normal baby.
I love life. Poop and pancetta, and all. (Wait, that is gross...)
GRIN
Monday, July 6, 2009
Well That Wasn't So Hard
Today's accomplishments include the following:
1) Resigning position at esteemed architecture firm
2) Receiving 3rd degree from father on actual intentions for trip to D.F.
Both tasks were so much easier than I thought they would be according to my anxiety and mole-hill-mountain-making. Those sweaty palms suggested that I might have had something to fear. I suppose it is just my respect for authority that caused me such trepidation. Speaking of big words... Little Bro, the correct usage of that word would have been: "Those screaming kids seem to be creating the prevailing background noise in this phone conversation".
It turns out that I have a pretty good plan, fairly well thought out, nicely funded, adequately supported and soon to be executed. I also have a dog on my foot. Belle the black lab likes to wedge my toes in the crook of her ear. She also likes to eat cheese and take dirty Kleenex out of the bathroom waste paper basket. I am starting to see a pattern here. It just became apparent to me recently that there are dog people and there are cat people. I don't know anything about bird, reptile, insect or amphibian people... but dogs and cats are so different. I like dogs, but I don't think I am a dog person. I used to be afraid of dogs due to a few minor maulings in my youth by the family Airedale-ish mutt, but I have had the good fortune to spend some quality time with Belle to get over all that. And, yep, turns out I dig cats as pets way better, box-o-poop included.
Where was I? Oh yes, pasta dinner... wait no, no, I was talking about accomplishments. The result of today's efforts is that I am completely free and clear to continue on my plan to see the world.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
1) Resigning position at esteemed architecture firm
2) Receiving 3rd degree from father on actual intentions for trip to D.F.
Both tasks were so much easier than I thought they would be according to my anxiety and mole-hill-mountain-making. Those sweaty palms suggested that I might have had something to fear. I suppose it is just my respect for authority that caused me such trepidation. Speaking of big words... Little Bro, the correct usage of that word would have been: "Those screaming kids seem to be creating the prevailing background noise in this phone conversation".
It turns out that I have a pretty good plan, fairly well thought out, nicely funded, adequately supported and soon to be executed. I also have a dog on my foot. Belle the black lab likes to wedge my toes in the crook of her ear. She also likes to eat cheese and take dirty Kleenex out of the bathroom waste paper basket. I am starting to see a pattern here. It just became apparent to me recently that there are dog people and there are cat people. I don't know anything about bird, reptile, insect or amphibian people... but dogs and cats are so different. I like dogs, but I don't think I am a dog person. I used to be afraid of dogs due to a few minor maulings in my youth by the family Airedale-ish mutt, but I have had the good fortune to spend some quality time with Belle to get over all that. And, yep, turns out I dig cats as pets way better, box-o-poop included.
Where was I? Oh yes, pasta dinner... wait no, no, I was talking about accomplishments. The result of today's efforts is that I am completely free and clear to continue on my plan to see the world.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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